(Author of "Three Men in a Boat," '*Paut Should women smoke? The question, in inch letters exhibited on a placard outside a small newsvendor op, caught randerer through appeals to his decision: Should short men marry tall wives?" Ought we to cut our hair?" "Should second cousins
less. Personally, Iam not worrying mykiss "Life's problems appear to_be end-self whether women should smoke or not. to their smoking. Smoking nerves. Women's nerves occasionally want, soothing, Th idiot who argues moking is unwomanly denounces the drinking of tea as unmanly. He is a moodenheaded person, who derives all his ideas feom cheap fiction.. The manly man of cheap, fiction smokes a pipe and drinks whisky, That is how we know heis a man. The womanly woman—well, I always feel could make a better ivoman myself out of an old clothes shop and a hairdresser's! block.
FOR THE GAKE OF THE AVERAGE MAN.
But, as I have said, the question does not impress mie a8 one demanding. my particular attention, I also. like the woman who does not smoke. I have met: in my time some very charming women who donot smoke. It may: be-a sign. of degeneracy, but I am prepared to abdicate my position of woman's god, leaving her free to lead her own life.
Candidly, the responsibility of feeling myself answerable for all a woman does or does not do would weigh upon me: There are men who are willing to take this burden upon themselves, and a large number of women are still anxious that they should continu to bear it: " spoke quite sericusly to a young lady not long ago on the subject of tight lacing; undoubtedly she was injuring her health. She admitted it herself, 'I know all you can sey," she wailed daresay lot of itis true. Those awful pictures where one sees—well, all the things one does not want to think about. If they are correct, it must be bad, squeezing it all up together." "Then why continue todo so?" Inrgued. Oh, it's easy enough to talk," she explained, few ohi fogies like you "—I had been speaking very plainly to her, and she was cross with me—' may pretend you don't like small waists, but the average man does."
Poor girl! She was quite prepared to injure herself for life, to damsgo her children's future, to be uncomfortable for fifteen hours a day, all to oblige the average man. It is a compliment to our sex. What man would suffer injury or This frenzied desire of wean to conform torture to please the average woman?
A fow daring fave exhibited a xy to sock for other gods—for ideals of their own, We call them the unsexed women. The womanly women. lift. up their hands in horror of such blasphemy. When I was a boy no womanly woman rode a bicycle—tricycles were permitted.
three wheels you could still be woman-Ly, but on two you were, 'a creature!" The womanly woman, secing her approach, would draw down the parlour blind with a jerk, lest the children looking out might catch a glimpse of her, and their young souls be smirched for all eternity. No woman y woman rode inside a hansom or outside abus. I remember the day my own dear mother climbed outside a bus for the first time in her life. Sho.was excited, and cried a little; but nobody—heaven be praised!—saw us—that body of importance. And after confes: ed the air was pleasant the first by whom the new is tried, nor rot the last to lay the old-aside," is a safe Tule for those.who would always retain the geod opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent incubus, the rage person," but the pioneer, the ide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.